Editorial: e-ifc No. 15, March 2008

Editorial

Dear Readers,

Prof. Mehdi ben Mimoun and student at IPI experiment on olives in Mornag, Tunisia. Picture by M. Marchand.

With surging demand for feed, food and fuel the rather unique world food situation we are currently facing is a real cause for concern. The FAO states that the food price index in September 2007 was 172 points, a 37 per cent increase from the previous year. The reasons for the increases are the continuing strong demand for food and feed, due to the strong GDP growth in many regions, and rising demand for biofuels - coupled with insufficient agricultural production - causing stocks to decline and prices to increase.

Will farmers benefit from higher market prices for their commodities? Some undoubtedly will. But many others, particularly small-scale farmers in developing countries, will suffer from the increase in the cost of food and the rise in prices of agri-inputs. The debate over the efficiency of biofuels to reduce greenhouse gases is now well established. High prices for commodities pressurise farmers to convert natural habitat into crop land, conversion which is very costly in terms of the carbon released into the atmosphere. Clearly, conserving energy inputs for agriculture is possible and should be encouraged. In this context, it is important to mention that the energy cost of producing one kilogram of potassium fertilizer is significantly less than that required for other macro nutrients.

In this issue of e-ifc, we include an evaluation of K availability in selected soils from Lebanon, provide a concise description of nutrient management research carried out in Argentina, and an assessment of K balance in one of the most productive and fastest expanding regions in the world - the Cerrado (savanna) of Brazil. The work from Brazil reveals that incorporating all the relevant data obtained from soil and plants as "layers" into a GIS system emphasises what we have known for long time: with high K content in the harvested product, K balance is very sensitive to productivity. The higher the yield, the greater the need for K fertilization in the following season. This work also shows that fertilization is very much influenced by other non-ag considerations, including distance from the supply source, and more. Read more on this in the research findings of this edition, and bear in mind that the production base of the Cerrado, and other similar biomes in South America, has an extremely important role in increasing food production for the whole world.

I wish you all an enjoyable read.

Hillel Magen
Director